Asus PG279Q: 27-inch 1440p 144Hz IPS G-SYNC Monitor

Update: This monitor will support an incredible 165Hz refresh rate with G-SYNC mode enabled. The monitor has also now been released in Europe and the United States.

For a long time, the Acer XB270HU has had the honor as being an exclusive G-SYNC 1440p 144Hz IPS monitor, but it will soon be challenged by the Asus PG279Q. This monitor was featured at Computex 2015 and will be available in Q4 2015 according to ASUS ROG Nordic. When the news about this monitor first came out, a lot of people were excited, since the Acer had so much trouble with severe backlight bleeding in the XB270HU that Amazon had to stop selling the monitor and review it, but it has seemingly been fixed, or at least to a certain degree. With the Acer XB271HU coming up, which also supports a 165Hz G-SYNC overclocked refresh rate, things might change though.

The display has a maximum supported resolution of 2560×1440, also referred to as WQHD resolution. For a majority of gamers, this particular resolution is the most preferred one because of the faster GPUs you can get nowadays. They aren’t powerful enough (at least one of them) to be sufficient for 4K gaming at high refresh rates, so 1440p at 144Hz will have to do. Refresh rate means a lot more than resolution for most people anyways, so that is not a problem. And to top it off, this monitor is capable of reaching a maximum refresh rate of 165Hz when G-SYNC is enabled. Just check out the official product page on the ASUS PG279Q and see all the awesome features for yourself in the beautifully designed landing page.

This monitor should not be confused with the Asus MG279Q, which is a 27-inch 144Hz 1440p FreeSync monitor with IPS panel, or the upcoming Asus PG27AQ, a 27-inch 4K IPS G-SYNC monitor. The Asus PG279Q features an excellent IPS panel, which will inevitably give you a much better color quality and general vision experience, and also superior viewing angles, which means that the colors won’t shift when viewing the monitor from the sides. When this monitor gets released, Asus has both FreeSync and G-Sync 144Hz IPS monitors at 1440p resolution, and will thereby force each other to lower their prices because of the competition. Us consumers always like competition because prices will be lowered, so hopefully we will see some pretty good deals on either the Acer XB270HU or this monitor when it gets on sale.

Connectivity options include DisplayPort and HDMI, but the DisplayPort connection has to be used to take advantage of G-SYNC and the 165Hz refresh rate as well. We predict that this will be a popular seller along with the XB271HK, so grab yours as soon as you can if you are interested in buying this monitor. The only downside that we can find is the price, but that’s because of the G-SYNC module.

You can see an overview of the specifications below. We will see if we can get hold of one that we can review so stay tuned!

Update: We have tested this monitor and have recommended it in our guide as we find it to be the best gaming monitor 2016.

It will probably be out in 2-3 months (1st half of Q4 2015) so hopefully not 6 months.

Sandcat

It’s comparable because it’s the exact same thing. Asus will have a different design, but the panels are identical in both monitors, from the same manufacturer.

Space Pickle

Something is not right about the 165hz specs for the PG279Q… DP 1.2 can’t support that refresh rate for 1440p 32-bit color. With overhead removed, DP1.2 maxes out at 17.28 Gb/s.

1440p at 146hz will max out at 17.22 Gb/s which is as high as DP1.2 can handle. (1440 x 2560 x 32[bit] x 146[hz] = 17.22 Gb/s). The proposed 165hz max refresh for this panel itself may be true BUT DP 1.2 won’t be able to handle it as far as the specs. 1440p @ 165hz will need 19.46 Gb/s, which DP 1.2’s max of 17.28 Gb/s can’t handle.

We would need DP 1.3 which will have a max throughput of 25.92Gb/s (overhead removed). DP 1.3 is not out nor even incorporated into any of the current video cards nor any other HW, so…

I’m confused about this 165hz spec. Unless, as strange as it is to consider, it is proposed to be reached by reducing the 32 bit per pixel color depth which is the max standard bpp everyone uses in Windows (True Color 32-bit), and the standard bpp we use for all these max throughput calcs.

As far as the Ultrawide 3440 x 1440 panels go, 100hz is fine for DP 1.2, since at that res and 32 bit color depth DP 1.2 can handle up to 109 hz which would equate to 17.278 Gb/s.

Anyone have any thoughts on the proposed 165hz spec for the PG279Q and by what means Asus plans to exceed DP 1.2 specs?!

Tyrann

I thought about that too. They did say it was overclocked, but i dont know how that effects quality or maybe even durability. I thought anything overclocked would somehow make the item degrade faster. Also they mentioned something about a premium DP cable. Is there such a thing as higher grade DP cables?

everything today everywhere is +100% overpriced. im not buying any of the new technology until its priced for honest people (meaning 50% price drop from current prices), not priced for idi0ts boosting their egos, propping up hyperinflation and destroying affordability.

Socius

That’s why it’s sold as a 144Hz display, but can be overclocked beyond specs. It’s the same way we had 1440p korean panels on DL-DVI using 16gbps…a far higher percentage over the specifications than these monitors.

Space Pickle

Your answer has nothing to do with the bandwidth limitation of DP 1.2 which is 17.28 Gb/s with overhead removed. We are talking about what the cable can handle NOT the panel itself. Overclocking the monitor will incur a bandwidth that exceeds 17.28 Gb/s which means EVEN if the panel itself CAN support 165 hz at that resolution, the DP 1.2 cable CANNOT if it is running 32 bpp. It’s simple math as was presented above.

The only way 1440 x 2560 x 165 could work. is if the monitor only supports 24 bit true color, NOT 32 bpp. True color (16.7 million color) is essentially 8 bit per RGB so 24bpp, AND 32 bit True Color has an additional 8 bit for alpha transparency.

Someone pointed it out to me that these panels do only support 24bpp so that must be how it calculates where I was using 32 bit True color as instead.

Socius

Yes. I know. And go read my post again. The cable “Specification” was designed for a certain limit. But as I mentioned before…we ran DL-DVI cables at 16gbps (not counting overhead). Even though this was far outside of their stated limitation. What was interesting, though, is that in some of the documentation for the specification, they mentioned that the (I believe) 9.9GB/s limit wasn’t a limitation of the specification, per se, and that it was a limitation of what the cable could handle. And as with any sort of safe limit set in place, there is always room to go beyond without a problem. And that’s why we could operate the 1440p monitors at up to 140Hz.

If there is no hard limit set by the hardware sending/receiving the data, then as you mentioned…the only limitation would be the ability of the cable to go beyond spec. And as we saw with the DL-DVI cables that could go up to 60% above spec, it’s quite likely that DP1.2 is in a similar situation. I remember there were even some premium DL-DVI cables being sold and marked as 11.8GB/s or 12.8GB/s. So again…it’s not outside the realm of possibility, as it is something that actually happened, and is something you can test for yourself if you cared to. It’s documented all over youtube and overclocking sites.

Also the current XB270HU, for example, is also 8bpc. But if I’m not mistaken, I believe it still gets transmitted as 10bpc although that may have been the calculation with overhead. Regardless…it would mean that there’s something else going on here, because if the 8bpc was the reason, then the current XB270HU would have been capable of a 165Hz OC as well. And as Nvidia hasn’t announced a “new generation of GSYNC,” and both these monitors use the same panel, there’s something else going on.

Space Pickle

Thank You, points well taken despite my thickheadedness 🙂

techfreshness

i’m hoping 3rd qtr…………imgur.com/b98lF9E

Jake Smith

Now I’m torn between this or the Acer Predator X34 Ultra wide…or even when Asus releases their ultra wide…gah…too many choices!

DEVILTAZ35 .

Yes there is , there are display port cables that handle the faster refresh rates otherwise you get severe flickering if you use cheaper cables. Especially on monitors like Rog Swift 144 and 165hz etc.A cheap cable will still handle the 1440p resolution at 60 hz though.

DEVILTAZ35 .

I have the rog swift and it’s an excellent gaming monitor and it will still have much better response time at 1ms compared to the new IPS screen which will be 4 ms.
It is true it doesn’t display the best colours but after extensive calibrations i have done on it . (Including altering Nvidia colour settings for Red Green and Blue and adjusting gamma.). Running monitor at 0.80 in Nvidia driver on a 980ti and all but red is a very close match to the Dell U2711 i have next to it in SRGB mode.
(Taking into account the differences in intensity of colour as TN cannot match a wide gamut Dell IPS in this regard).

The Dell of course is a wide colour gamut monitor so you can go far beyond even gaming IPS panels with it colour wise but at SRGB setting the Dell has much better reds but the greens and blues are very close on the Asus which surprised me.
The Asus also tends towards displaying orange instead of the deep red of the Dell which some may like but others may not.
(The Orange look of the red is correct for a standard colour range monitor like this TN panel though.)

The Screen uniformity at least on the Asus monitor i have is actually very good with little to no colour variance from top to bottom like reviewers stated was an issue on some panels.

I much prefer the colours of the Dell which are like splattering paint on the screen overall but i doubt even waiting for the Asus IPS it is going to match the U2711 for colour quality as it’s just in a different league despite it’s age.
If it was possible to add in Gsync to the U2711 i would just do that and put up with 60 fps i love it that much . However playing on a 1ms tn panel with pretty decent colour at 144hz has changed my thinking alot as well.

The games i tested were Grand Theft Auto V where Gsync is amazing to use however as is the nature with TN panels the deep red coloured cars will appear as orange on the Asus TN swift and Project Cars where the Asus again holds up so well with Gsync. Colours are very vibrant and probably about 75% as good as the Dell which is not bad from a TN panel.

I also tried Rainbow Six Siege Beta and it was crystal clear at 144hz with no ghosting using a GTX980ti at 1440p and overdrive set to normal range.
This game is so much fun and this sort of speed it is hard to describe.

I’ll be picking up the new PG279Q on release anyhow so i’ll put my thoughts up about this then as well and do a comparison against the PG278Q.

I just wanted to give people an honest opinion on my own findings after using my own money to purchase the Asus. I don’t trust review sites that get free samples to do testing for the most part so i prefer to test products myself.

On a side note if you love FPS games then the built in crosshairs on the Asus Swift are an excellent addition and extremely accurate and adjustable. It definitely does give you an advantage especially online.

Samin

Top!!!

Ben Van Deventer

Too bad it’s getting horrific reviews… 🙁

andre 92

excellent monitor! too bad i only buy 4k now.

jt3z

Cant find it on Amazon. Have to buy it on Amazon as i have a gift card from there lol

Anselmo Pereira Alves

It’s Cool.

bob

i have the asus 27inch 144 htz monitor and would never go back to a standard 60 htz monitor the quality is outstanding…i bought my asus monitor two years ago…not the one above but equally as good